Prosecutor Rupert Jones said the police had first seen Pumfrey’s Ford Fiesta at shortly after midnight on April 27 in the Warwickshire village of Brinklow, and a check showed the number was registered to an address in Essex.

Wrongly suspecting the car was on cloned plates, they began to follow it, but the Fiesta, which had at least three occupants at that time, sped away and they lost it.

Mr Jones pointed out that Pumfrey had entered his plea on the basis that he was not driving during that pursuit, or during a second chase, when the Fiesta again evaded the police.

The car was next spotted 15 minutes later in Breedon Avenue in Coventry.

Pumfrey outside court (Image: Paul Beard)

By then the only occupant, Pumfrey, sped away, reaching up to 80mph in the winding residential street before turning into Quorn Way where he went over speed bumps without slowing.

At a T-junction, without stopping, he made a blind right turn onto Willenhall Lane, still a residential area, at 40mph and then, unfamiliar with the area, he turned into Grange Avenue, which comes to a dead end.

Undeterred, he performed a handbrake turn, and as he sped past the oncoming police car he was ‘laughing uncontrollably.’

Chase continued with flat tyres

As the chase continued, he went over more speed bumps at 60mph, and carried on towards the A45 at the same speed, even after two of the Fiesta’s tyres were deflated by a police stinger.

He went onto the wrong side of the road as he sped along London Road, and then went through a red light to join the A45 at 50, carrying on for another mile before finally stopping.

The car smelled of cannabis, and when he was tested after his arrest, Pumfrey’s reading was 2.6 compared to the legal limit of cannabis for driving of 2, added Mr Jones.

Joshua Purser, defending, said: “It was three things, fear, immaturity and inexperience, which are a potentially dangerous cocktail behind the wheel.”

He explained that Pumfrey has a borderline diagnosis of Asperger’s, which had ‘heightened those three factors,’ and which also resulted in him being easily led.

Mr Purser said Pumfrey was with four so-called friends that night, one of whom was driving the car during the first two police chases before they abandoned him, leaving him alone in the car in an unfamiliar city.

He added that Pumfrey has now moved to live with an aunt in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, to get away from those influences, and has a job working nights at a supermarket.

'You are lucky you haven’t killed or maimed someone'

Deputy Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told Pumfrey: “If you had spent years in the courts, you would have seen families who have lost loved ones in road accidents, you would have seen people who cannot walk because they have been injured in road accidents.

“Driving is one of the most potentially dangerous things people do. It must be obvious to you, though you won’t have seen what I have seen, that you can change or destroy people’s lives.

“And if you take drugs, you make your driving even more dangerous, because it obliterates any careful approach. You are lucky you haven’t killed or maimed someone.”

The judge said he had considered passing an immediate sentence, but added: “It is easy to imagine someone like you getting in with the wrong crowd.